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This study examines strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope ratios (Sr/Sr, δO, δC) in dental enamel and bone apatite from 82 individuals interred at Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age burial sites near Madrid, Spain, to discern variations in dietary patterns and identify possible migrants. Questions about mobility patterns and subsistence practices have played a central role in the scholarship of Late Prehistoric central Iberia in the last 20 years, but the archaeological record has still not been able to provide clear answers. This study adds valuable data to this line of research. The results of this study suggest that migration from regions with different geologic landscapes was uncommon in these communities. For the identified migrants, based upon the Sr/Sr values, several of the identified non-local individuals originate from regions with substantially older lithological features and possible places of origin are being investigated. As it is not possible to discern individuals who may have moved from regions with similar geologic landscapes using this methodology, these data provide the minimum number of migrants, and it is conceivable that the number of non-locals in this sample may be higher. Combining multiple lines of material and biological evidence and the completion of Sr isotope mapping in the Iberian Peninsula will help to clarify these findings. Stable carbon isotope data provide new and direct evidence of regional changes in consumption patterns. In particular, this study provides some possible evidence for the consumption of C plants in third-millennium bc central Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first summed calibrated date probability distributions for the later prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula. The SCDPD is based on 4402 determination between 8000 and 3000 BP, a time range beginning in the regional late Mesolithic and running through the Bronze Age. This period is known to see the first introduction of farming at the beginning of the Neolithic, the development of the first large population aggregations during the Copper Age and the subsequent abrupt transition to the substantially diverse Iberian Bronze Age ‘cultures’. The results conform to an exponential model for demographic growth, with a slight “boom and bust” episode between 5300 and 5150 cal BC, some 300 years after the first dated evidence for agriculture in Iberia. The evidence suggest that if migrants from outside Iberia were involved in the introduction of domesticates, this must have happened at a small scale, one not observable through SCDPD. The dating of the observed population “boom” coincides with the decline in frequency of the cardial-impressed and the wide spread of “epicardial” wares throughout the Peninsula. It thus seems reasonable to suppose that these patterns indicate a moderate increase in fertility rates of early farming groups. The SCDPD analysis also suggests that explanatory models for the rise of Copper Age ‘complexity’ or the transition to the Bronze Age should not rely on substantial changes in overall Iberian population densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]